


the testing-tree

by cosmicpoet



Category: Black Mirror, Black Mirror: Bandersnatch (2018)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Love Confessions, M/M, Self-Harm, Suicide (mentioned)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-23
Updated: 2019-01-23
Packaged: 2019-10-14 19:04:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17514194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmicpoet/pseuds/cosmicpoet
Summary: Stefan may not be alone in the dark and deeper dark that he's pushing through, making decisions, or following through on the decisions of a higher power. And Colin -The Colin Ritman- seems to understand it all. Does that scare him?Shouldthat scare him?





	the testing-tree

There’s a little wooden mannequin on Colin’s desk; the legs, protruding joints and all, creak with the ecstasy of bedposts when Stefan pushes them to their limit. He wants, for some reason, to make something indistinguishable. An urge inside him propels him to the conclusion of creation, to make something so absurd that control diminishes by the second; perhaps the end product will be something so unfathomable that nobody can bear to look, but he will lift his hand and lay claim to the spot in the universe that he should forever believe to be his. When he moves onto twisting the arms of the figure, something stops him, an impulse that he can’t predict.

“Yeah,” Colin murmurs, separating the air to direct a channel of vibration, leading his voice to a place that Stefan would name _home,_ “the right arm on that thing’s…”

“…A little creaky. Yeah, I know.”

“And you know that how?”

“N-No, I wasn’t…I mean…it’s not like I’ve been…”

“Stalking me? Sitting in my bedroom whilst I’m at work playing with an artist’s mannequin? No, Stefan, I trust you a little more than _that,”_ Colin laughs.

“So…what _did_ you mean, then?”

“I meant what I said. You know that the right arm of an old mannequin in a room you’ve never been in before is stiff. It’s a stupid detail. So unimportant. But now it’s the elephant in the room, isn’t it?”

“Do you…” Stefan starts, pushing anxiety down his throat, like a finger that threatens to make him choke on his own vomit, “do you ever think that things aren’t…the way they should be?”

“How so?”

“Like…like you’ve done something before. Like this, I mean. I don’t even know how I know what your room looks like, god damn it, I’ve never been here before today! But just because _I_ haven’t been in here -”

“Doesn’t mean that another you hasn’t been here? Yeah, I get it.”

“You do?”

“‘Course I do. C’mon, sit with me,” Colin pats the empty side of the bed that he’s lying on, and slowly, tentatively, like any misstep may imbalance the universe, Stefan creaks his legs up from the desk chair and sits on the edge of the bed, not daring to intrude any further. 

“I don’t bite,” Colin laughs, and Stefan gently lies down next to him. Perhaps minutes pass, perhaps centuries, but he’s lost in the pattern of the ceiling, trying to find where all the dots of paint connect to one another.

“Do you get it too? Like, the feeling that you’ve been here before, made all these decisions before. I’d brush it off as déjà vu, but…tell me I don’t sound crazy?”

“You’re just stuck in it. You’re thinking too much about arbitrary things. You can’t brush it off as déjà vu because that doesn’t explain how you know things - accurate things - that you couldn’t have known unless you’d been in that situation before, right?”

“Y-Yeah.”

“And even though you’re probably uncertain of how many times you’ve been through whatever situation you’re in, you still see it like you’re losing control? Like it’s a bad thing?”

“Of course. What other way is there to see it?”

“Hear me out here…what if none of it matters?”

“Huh?”

“You heard me. What if none of that matters? Think about it. You’re getting infinite opportunities to try again. You can make your best work like that.”

“But it’s not _me_ making it!”

“Go on?”

“It’s whoever - no, _whatever -_ is controlling me! Even my own damn mind,” Stefan reaches up, pulling at his hair, enamouring himself with graphic thoughts of scalping himself, carving out his brain matter and handing it to Colin, relinquishing control he’s not even sure he has.

“Hey, hey,” Colin grabs his hands, holding them tightly - it would be romantic, if there wasn’t a bead of blood forming from a scratch on Stefan’s forehead, and the look in Colin’s normally-stoic eyes wasn’t, for want of a better word, _scared._ “It’s alright,” he continues, “you’re just going through it right now. ‘Cause you’re thinking about it, and it’s sending you deep into a place that, trust me, you don’t wanna go.”

“That sounds like it’s from experience.”

“It is.”

“So…be honest with me,” Stefan says, turning over so he’s facing Colin, “how long?”

“Forever.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah…you get used to it, I guess. Who knows, maybe you’ve been going through it your whole life and you just started making the wrong choices a few months ago? You never know with stuff like this. Can’t try again unless you fuck up.”

“The wrong choices?”

“You know, the ones _they_ don’t want you to make.”

“They?”

“Believe whatever you want to. Call it God, call it the government, call it your family. Call it drugs or mind control or fucking _I don’t know,_ maybe this is all a game? Point is, if we’re not in control, then do we really get to claim what we create? Or are our existences themselves just subject to analysis by some fucking higher power, and we -”

“Stop.”

“Sorry.”

“Yeah, it’s just…it’s too much.”

“I know. Don’t you want to theorise?”

“I just want it to be over.”

“Want what to be over?”

_“This.”_

“This life? This iteration? Or everything?”

“Everything.”

“And if you can’t have control? If it’s all useless?”

“Then I want every version of me, every fucking timeline, I just want to…I want them to die! I want every remnant of Stefan Butler to cease to be, and all that’s left is Bandersnatch. It’s the only worthwhile thing about me, anyway.”

“You think you _are_ what you create?”

“Of course I am.”

“But if your choices aren’t yours, then are you anything at all?”

“I…I don’t know…I…”

Stefan’s hands seem to be stuck in the liminal confusion of not knowing exactly what to do. It’s like there’s a timer, ticking down until a choice is made, and in the meantime, he’ll cower in his own reality, terrified of whether he’s going to bite his nails or rip his hair out.

Someone decides on the latter. Colin decides otherwise. His rough hands feel like tidal waves as they envelop Stefan’s, gently guiding them down, down, towards his chest. Stefan chokes something that sounds like _“I can’t do this,”_ and then he doesn’t have to any more, because Colin is holding him closer, whispering something that only they can hear. No audience is privy to this - unless there exists a third body, watching the audience watch them, perhaps reading a script, a story, a vignette upon tragedy…

“The heart breaks and breaks and lives by breaking,” Colin whispers, taking steady breaths, keeping his hands close to Stefan’s, watching for any sign of danger. “It is necessary to go through dark and deeper dark and not to turn.”

“I…I love you,” Stefan says, impulsively. This decision, as much as he would like for it to be otherwise, is his own. And then he’s looking at Colin, and Colin is looking at him, and the world is falling apart at the sheer bravery of it; the universe, unsettled, begins to fall into that _deeper dark,_ and Stefan realises just what he’s done.

He’s made the wrong choice.

Because Colin loosens his hands for moment enough to give him leave to stand up, run from the room, lean over the balcony and let the bile in his throat strangle him into submission.

**JUMP | DON’T JUMP**

Something is propelling him over the balcony, and he doesn’t understand. _He doesn’t understand._ Is it fear - of rejection, perhaps? Or of confronting that part of himself that he managed to suppress for so long? And what of it now, of working at Tuckersoft, of Bandersnatch - this isn’t the end. No…as surely as he loves Colin, he trusts him. He will simply restart, act better, _be_ better. Create better. Perhaps even create something that Colin could love. Because, right now, to him, the possibility of Colin actually reciprocating his feelings is as unreal as the feeling of air beneath his hands, nothing to catch him except the hope - the terrifying, fearful hope - that he’ll get another chance. If he even wants one.

He jumps.

_“Wait!”_

Colin is screaming.

He cracks onto the pavement, and hopes that his love’s tears will not fall upon his body.

* * *

 

…There’s a little wooden mannequin on Colin’s desk.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed this! Me and my friend Cassian had a really nice conversation about Bandersnatch, and she's a great creative, so this is for her! The quote in this fic, and the title, are from a poem called The Testing-Tree by Stanley Kunitz.
> 
> Please comment if you liked!


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